Technology

Hosting and Domains

How to Create a Website? From Website Hosting to Buying a Domain

To make your business successful, a website is a sure-fire way to help. A website is essential in today’s modern world. A website can gain increased exposure for your business. Moreover, a website can serve as a place where customers can purchase your goods and/or service. Many businesses actually struggle with how to create a website – the process is quite involved, and it can seem daunting. During this article, we look at the steps involved with creating a website – from planning through to website hosting and template creation.

Step 1 – Plan your website and its contents

Before you even consider anything like hosting and domain names, you must first plan your website. Planning is essential. You must first ascertain the purpose of your website – what do you want it to achieve? Will you have eCommerce functionality? Who is the primary target/customer of your website? What color scheme and themes do you want to include within the design? Make your plan detailed and make notes – the more detail you have, the easier the creation process will be.

Step 2 – Select a website domain name

One of the first things you should do after creating a plan is to settle on a domain name. A domain name is your website address i.e Amazon.com. This is what users will type in to access your website. Once you have established a domain name you can then start to create every other aspect of your website. In an ideal world, a domain name should include your business name and a keyword that relates to your industry or products.

Step 3 – Choosing a suitable hosting plan

After choosing a domain name, you can then pick a hosting plan. Website hosting is another vital part of creating a website. Hosting is basically a server where your web pages and files are stored – when a user types in your domain name, they are directed to this server location. Hosting comes in many forms – shared hosting, reseller web hosting, cloud hosting. All you need is a fast service with a reliable uptime and sufficient bandwidth and features for your needs.

Step 4 – Choose a method of website creation

Next, you have to consider how you will actually create your website. There are many different ways of creating a website. You can build one from scratch using a fully fledged development program such as Adobe Dreamweaver. Alternatively, you can pay a web development company to create your website for you. Finally, you can use a third-party website builder such as Weebly, Wix or Shopify. Each type of creation method has its pros and cons. For example, creating a website from scratch requires knowledge of HTML & CSS code among other things. This should all be stipulated and discussed during your planning.

Step 5 – Create a website template

Finally, you can create a website template. A template is the basic design of your website and layout. This template is what all your other pages will be based upon. Creating a master template speeds up the design process, and saves you time as you don’t have to create each page from scratch. A template should include the consistent layout of your website including aspects such as a header, navigation, social media sharing, and company logo.

If you follow these 5 steps then you essentially have the beginnings of a website. Most of the above can be completed by anyone regardless of their web design skill. To create the actual website, however, it could pay to enlist the services of a third party web development team or hire a freelance web designer.